


Kill of the Night

by Neyiea



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Building upon the gifts that canon gave us, Canon Dialogue, Canon-Typical Behavior, Canon-Typical Violence, Episode: s03e14 The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, It's not so much introspection as it is extrapolation, M/M, Possessive Behavior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:35:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24604027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neyiea/pseuds/Neyiea
Summary: Jerome wakes up with unfinished business and he readies himself to put an end to it once and for all. The situation evolves in a way he never would have expected.
Relationships: Jerome Valeska/Bruce Wayne
Comments: 31
Kudos: 155





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SofterSoftest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SofterSoftest/gifts), [miIkobitch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miIkobitch/gifts).



> Dedicated to people who I believe, based on your reactions to my other work, are gonna get a delightful little kick outta this. <3
> 
> I am _all about_ the confrontation in the maze of mirrors, but I do like to think that-even before Bruce and Jerome were truly _alone together_ for the first time-things were already spinning into motion. You'll see.
> 
> Title from Kill of the Night by Gin Wigmore. 
> 
> xoxo

His fingers twitch. He aches. He drifts towards wakefulness, synapses unsteadily firing after so long without any impulses or signals. 

The cocoon of tedious, unending darkness cracks. Light seeps in from beyond his closed eyelids.

He draws in a full breath.

Memories lap at him like gentle waves. Slowly creeping over him. Further, further, becoming clearer, until he finally recalls—

A sweet doe-eyed _lamb_ shaking in his arms. Small and soft; the precious young sacrifice that Jerome needed to show all of Gotham just what they were dealing with. He would have played the part so wonderfully that there wouldn’t have been a dry eye left in the city. Oh, how the crowds would have mourned him; wailing and lamenting that he’d been taken from them too soon. Oh, how the crowds would have trembled; fearing and hating Jerome for his cold-blooded brutality. Bruce Wayne was a shooting star; destined to have a short moment of brilliance before his untimely end. A pretty little tragedy just waiting to happen. He’d been marked by death the year before—an unlikely lone survivor, a poster-child for loss and misery—and Jerome would be the one to finally bring about his end.

Jerome would have held him as he bled out, right up until he had taken his last breath. Jerome would have allowed the boy one small mercy for the bravery he’d shown by coming back to the stage of his own free will—volunteering for his own execution in order to keep his _butler_ safe—and that would have been to make it quicker than originally planned. 

But—

His memories are an indistinct mess. Most things beyond his final few moments in the limelight slip away from his searching fingertips, but he also can’t tell if he’d gotten the chance to kill Bruce before he’d been double-crossed; used like a pawn in a game that he hadn’t known the full scope of. 

His hands slowly curl into fists, his eyes blearily flutter open. 

Theo Galavan, he thinks harshly, nails digging into his palms as he wonders what it’ll be like to finally split him open.

Bruce Wayne, he thinks softly, hands going slack as he wonders if he’d forgotten what it had been like to finally split him open. The possibility of blacking that memory out after so much buildup leaves him feeling morose. If he didn’t succeed the first time around then they’d both have to die, unfinished business and all that, but one death surely deserved more consideration than the other.

Theo could be slaughtered and crammed into whatever nearest ditch or dumpster Jerome could find.

Bruce, if he were still breathing, would require something that would showcase the significance of Jerome’s previous attempt on his life. Personal. _Intimate_. Jerome holding him close. Jerome’s knife piercing the skin of his delicate throat. Maybe something more, he’ll figure it out when he knows anything for certain, but…

But first Jerome has to get some answers and get out of here.

It’s all so much easier than expected, but maybe things are just like that when you come back from the afterlife. Theo is unfortunately already dead for _the second time_ , the bastard, but Bruce is thrillingly alive. 

Jerome has a gun. Jerome has a _cult_. He hasn’t got a face, but he knows where it is, and he knows what he wants to do to the person who cut it off of him so that he could wear it as if he meant to turn himself into Jerome’s successor even though he had absolutely none of Jerome’s greatest qualities. He escapes the station, he hijacks a news van, he gets his face back.

He gets the monotonous underperformer who’d been wearing it, too.

Tonight, there would be no rules.

Tonight, he was going to make history. 

Jerome makes it out of the power-plant in time to watch the world beyond the river go dark, and—even if this is exactly what he’d planned, even if success wasn’t a surprise—he gets goosebumps at the sight of it. The lights go out several city-blocks at a time and in less than half a minute the only illumination is coming from the few places with backup generators and distant cars; faint blurs of colour in an otherwise inky void. 

It’s beautiful. It’s terrible. It’s everything that he wanted.

He laughs long and hard. He feels full to the brim of what he knows he’d gotten his first taste of when he he’d been running around just as wildly as he pleased—unknowingly playing into Galavan’s hands—even though the particulars of that time are still a blur to him.

Power. Control. Influence. 

Bruce Wayne, he thinks again, wondering what it will feel like to watch his eyes go dark.

Wondering if he’ll feel even more powerful than he does now.

Wondering if completing the task that he’d meant to do right before he’d been killed will help free up his other memories, because whenever he tries to pull something to the surface Bruce’s theatric brush with death seems to overpower it.

It nags at him, like a persistent itch that he needs to scratch. He’ll kill him, just like he would have killed him up on that stage, finally putting an end to the chapter that he’d been unable to finish. He’ll cut his throat and hold him as he bleeds. Bruce would be one of many deaths tonight, but there would be a significant weight to his passing all the same. A long-awaited tragedy contrasting against the night’s sudden grim comedy. There was something Jerome couldn’t quite put his finger on, meaningful in a way he didn’t understand yet, an unfinished joke that he didn’t know the punchline to. Something about a boy who got away…

He’d figure it out once he laid eyes on him.

He laughs again, under his breath, and eventually he hears different laughter echo back at him. 

Some of his followers have come looking for him and, as if something like destiny is tugging him towards the task that he knows he must complete, Wayne Manor is conveniently located on the side of the river where Jerome currently is and not on the island-proper. 

Tonight, at long last, Bruce Wayne was going to die.

His fingers twitch with the desire to feel a fluttering heartbeat—rabbit-like, at first, then slowing, fading, stilling—underneath his hand.

Jerome can hardly wait.

-x-x-x-

He forgives himself the facetious dramatism of his entrance—just as he will forgive himself for so many other, much more terrible things—because the strange dynamic that he and Bruce share in the moment pleases him.

The living and the dead reuniting. The living and the dead switching places. 

Something flickers hazily in his mind—that’s not the joke, but it’s close. Closer than something about a boy who got away—and he feels his smile widen as he comes to stand before _him_.

“My, my,” he intones, eagerly taking in the sight of Bruce Wayne seated on his knees on the floor. He folds at the waist to get a good look at him. “Look how big you’ve gotten.”

Will he shake when Jerome’s arms fold around him? Will his eyes fill with tears?

Bruce glares up at him, obstinate in the face of danger. He’d been so brave the first time, too, at least in the beginning, at least from what Jerome can piece together. Jerome can’t be entirely sure how he’ll react when the time for his death comes.

He likes that, the unpredictability. Just because he knows the end of the story doesn’t mean that the journey to Bruce’s grave needs to be boring. It was supposed to be something that would rock the foundations of Gotham. It was supposed to be something spectacular.

A shooting star blazing a trail across the sky; burning itself up and disappearing into the darkness of the night. Beautiful and fleeting. 

He turns to look back the way he came and glances a large fireplace.

To kill Bruce in this darkness, unable to really see the nuances of his facial expression as Jerome held his knife against flesh, seems wrong. It won’t do. It won’t do at all.

“Anyone got a light?” He asks as he steps towards it, taking a quickly offered lighter without bothering to glance at the owner. Logs are already stacked inside, with smaller bits of kindling set up underneath. Jerome can hear his followers start rummaging around—probably looting—as he flicks the lighter open, but he doesn’t pay them any mind.

The kindling catches quickly and he tends to the growing flame; watching it lick hungrily at the smallest pieces of wood, watching the fire begin to devour them. His mind is strangely quiet, like it’s using his brief respite from active plotting to slowly start recalibrating, and once the blaze has truly started with no chance of it dying out he lifts himself back onto his feet, looking around the room with what feels like a fresh set of eyes.

“Nice place you got here,” he comments. A bit gaudy, he thinks. “You rent?”

“What do you want?”

Bruce’s tone is flat, unafraid. Even the follower who’d taken Jerome’s face had sounded more scared of him back when Jerome was pretending to play nice.

“Attitude,” Jerome admonishes, though he’s somewhat delighted by it. Bruce being brave now would make his eventual fall into hysterics so much sweeter. “Teenagers, am I right?” He directs the question to a man who he doesn’t remember, but whose proximity to Bruce can only mark him as one thing. The butler stares at him, just as unafraid as his charge. Jerome doesn’t allow himself to be bothered by it. 

“Oh, I remember those days.” And he does, vaguely. It’s like watching an old black and white movie, the reel of film partially damaged and skipping a few sections at a time. There’s enough information left for him to fill in the gaps, but he’d like for things to be clearer. Some details were not meant to ever be forgotten—like exactly how it felt to finally kill your drunk, whore mother. “So many exciting new emotions flowing through ya.” He stretches out his arms, folds them over himself. “Wanting to kill everyone you saw.” He sighs happily, but he sees—just for a second—Bruce’s attention shift to the side.

Rude. Jerome had come all this way to kill him personally. Bruce shouldn’t be looking at anything or anyone else. 

Jerome casts a glance in the direction Bruce had looked and finds one of his followers fiddling around with a truly kitschy crystal owl. It’s not important, except for in the fact that Bruce had looked at it when he should have been looking at Jerome.

“You.” He reaches out a hand expectantly. “Gimme.” 

He watches Bruce’s expression as he takes it. Visible wariness crosses his features for the first time tonight. It makes something happy and vicious light up in Jerome’s chest. “You know I will never understand rich peoples’ tastes.”

“It’s worthless.” Is the immediate answer. Bruce adopts another cool look, but Jerome had already seen him waver. Jerome’s going to press against his weak points until he cracks. “My father found it at a flea-market. I keep it for sentimental reasons.”

“Nice try.” He’s seems so put together, even now. It makes Jerome want to make him break character. It makes Jerome want to make him angry. He makes a considering noise as he tests the weight of the owl. “It’s got some heft to it. Expensive, I’m guessing.” Just like everything undoubtedly was in here. “It would be such a shame if I—” He lets it roll off of his fingers, watching both Bruce and his butler scramble as if they mean to catch it.

It doesn’t shatter. Bruce breathes a sigh of relief. Jerome picks it up again. 

“Tougher than I figured,” he comments.

It’s not the only thing that’s tougher than he thought it would be. Oh well.

“Anyway.” He throws it over his shoulder, and he can hear it break into pieces. 

How many pieces could he break Bruce Wayne into?

His mind trips up at the thought. 

The butler curses and Bruce, finally having enough of sitting in compliant submission, quickly rises up to his feet. There’s fire in his eyes—and it’s not just the reflection of the flames that Jerome had started—as he says, “I asked you what you want!”

Right. A doe-eyed sacrificial lamb in his arms. All of Gotham wailing and lamenting. All of Gotham fearing and hating. Feeling a pulse fade away under his fingers. Holding him as he breathed his very last breath.

“Right. Sorry. The old noodle’s still a little al dente post-thaw,” he begins agreeably. “The reason I’m here is I’m gonna kill you.” He allows his voice to deepen. Just saying his intention out loud is thrilling. 

Bruce is still for a moment, eyes briefly averting as he processes Jerome’s words before locking onto him again. 

“Why?”

His voice is soft. Jerome wants to make him scream.

“Well, it’s the last thing I remember wanting to do,” he answers honestly. No point in lying to someone who would never get an opportunity to use the truth against you. “It’s been nagging at me since I woke up.” His voice goes rough again. He takes out his knife. Bruce stays where he is; not shying away from Jerome, not trying to run. He’s looking right at him, and his eyes may no longer be full of the fire of his anger but they are full of something that makes Jerome’s thoughts spiral with the desire to make him _react_. “The idea of slitting that pretty pink throat of yours.” Just like he had meant to. Just like he had started to. Jerome wonders if he left a scar behind. Jerome wonders if Bruce will squirm when he retraces it with a different knife. “Figured that’d clear the decks.” 

His mind steadily fixates on the moment in time that he’d never had an opportunity to properly end, and once his unfinished business is over he can get to work on other things.

“What do you think, huh?” He begins stepping closer.

The butler reacts first, but Jerome doesn’t look at him. Doesn’t look at his followers as he hears them ready their weapons. Doesn’t look away from Bruce.

“I remember that night,” Bruce says, words spilling anxiously into the air between them. As he continues talking, though, he appears to gain some of his confidence back. “When you took over the benefit.” He locks eyes with Jerome again. “You were quite the showman.” 

“Thank you,” he drawls, pleased. “Always nice to be appreciated.” The knife dances in his palm as he twists it into the air. Flattery would get Bruce nowhere, but it was nice to hear. 

He’s so close, so close, so close—

“And you’re just going to kill me here?” Bruce asks, the blade of Jerome’s knife inches from his throat. His eyes are unwavering. “It’s kind of disappointing.” 

Jerome lifts the knife. He meets Bruce’s steady gaze. He’ll kill him, cut him, let him bleed out just like he was supposed to, but…

Disappointing, disappointing, disappointing—

A death meant to shake the foundations of Gotham couldn’t be disappointing. 

“Ahhh, what do you mean?” He asks as he turns, knife falling away.

“After all the buildup,” Bruce starts, sounding so very reasonable despite the topic. “You coming back to life. Turning off the lights in Gotham. Killing me here just doesn’t show a lot of…” He trails off, and Jerome is absolutely sure that he’s done it on purpose, but still…

He feels as though he must be lacking something for Bruce to facing certain death with this level of composure. This should rightfully be one of the most terrifying moments of his too short life, yet he’s emoted so subtly ever since Jerome walked in that his face may as well have been carved from stone. This isn’t the setup to the joke that Jerome is still trying to figure out.

“Flair?” He leaps onto a couch. “Style?” He kicks a pillow. “Panache?” He spreads his arms wide. “Hm?” He leans, looming over Bruce just as much as he had been when Bruce had been knelt on the floor at his feet. “Go on boy, spit it out, I can take it.”

“I’m Bruce Wayne.”

He drops down from the couch. “I’m aware.” He makes his way towards Bruce again.

“I am the ruling elite,” he states as Jerome begins to circle around him, his knife tracing the air around Bruce’s neck, almost grazing against the soft weave of his black sweater. “My company is the machine that keeps the cogs of Gotham running.”

“Wow,” Jerome whispers in mock awe from behind him.

Cogs, he thinks. Tiny little cogs in a giant absurd machine, he remembers. 

Bruce had watched his video from the police station. 

“Killing me should mean something,” his voice rises; urgent, angry, as Jerome moves to settle in front of him. This is the most expressive that he’s been so far. “And you’re telling me no one’s going to see it?!”

They lock eyes, and Jerome’s mind trips again.

A sweet doe-eyed _lamb_ shaking in his arms. A public execution that the masses wouldn’t be able to tear their gaze away from.

He looks at Bruce, at that steady gaze, and he feels—

Seen, in some strange new way. Understood. A happy, warm spark of murderous intent lights up inside of his chest, and he couldn’t stop himself from smiling if he tried. 

What’s courage, a memory whispers at him.

Grace under pressure, he answers. 

“You’re saying I need an audience?”

Just like the first time. Just like Jerome wanted.

“Oh,” he sighs, and Bruce’s expression is almost like a smile. Pleased, as if he’s the one with the upper hand. Jerome lifts his knife up towards him. “Look.” He grabs the back of his neck and reels him in closer. “I know you’re just trying to buy time, so you can escape.” That much was obvious. He leans in closer, almost intimately so, to whisper in the ear of the boy who he’s going to kill. “But your point is still valid.” He leans back, looks at Bruce’s face.

Smiles.

The attempted exploitation left him feeling more charmed than angry.

Manipulation was so much more fun than begging and crying and pleading not to be killed. Even if Jerome had caught on to it quickly the obvious knowledge of, and the subsequent catering to, his desire for a show was almost enough to make his heart race with excitement. 

Bruce wanted to be seen? Oh, Jerome was going to make his end unforgettable. 

Tonight, until Bruce had taken his last breath, they’d be co-stars. Jerome could manage to share his spotlight for one evening with the boy whose eventual death represented so much. 

Cogs, the word flashes in his mind again.

He wonders if Bruce liked his speech. 

“Saddle up boys,” he calls, “we’re taking this show on the road!”

And he knows just the spot.

The boy who was meant to become more, who died. The boy who was meant to die, who escaped. That’s not the joke, either, but he thinks it’s the closest he’s gotten so far.

Jerome has become more, now. And Bruce wouldn’t escape, this time. 

This is going to be even better than the first time that he made an attempt on Bruce’s life.

He’s happy that he failed then so that he could succeed now.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'mma just say, after watching these scenes over and over to make sure I got the canon dialogue right, there is so much _intense eye contact_ and _touching_ going on in this episode, _no wonder_ I ended up shipping these two as hard as I do. Good lord.

After dragging Bruce away from his butler by pinching his ear and pulling—strangely intimate, incredibly weird, were all rich kids this close to the help or was it because his mommy and daddy were cold in the ground?—he finds a hood to put over his precious little lamb’s head. 

It’s thrilling, the idea of taking Bruce away from what he knows and where he’s comfortable to throw him into the madness of a place that Jerome is eager to behold. They’ll take in the sights, the sounds, the sheer lunacy and depravity. Then, when they’re all done, everything is going to be as it is meant to be.

The boy who died coming back as a Messiah. The boy who escaped death rendered unable to flee.

He laughs under his breath, delighted by the idea of it.

The lingering fuzziness of his memories is less significant now in the wake of planning the perfect way to end Bruce’s life. It should still have a personal touch, of course, but if he’s going above and beyond to make things grander, then merely cutting his throat cannot possibly be enough. It would have been, five minutes ago, in the quiet coziness of Bruce’s home. It would have been, back on a stage a literal lifetime ago, when all the ones who were watching were people who would mourn him. The audience that Jerome is bringing him to die in front of will not mourn him, though, they’ll revel in Bruce’s death just as they are reveling in the darkness that Jerome is responsible for. Bruce wants an audience. They want a show.

Jerome wants to steal the breath from his lungs and make his heart stop. 

Jerome wants Bruce to see what his beloved little cogs are willing to do to each other when the lights go out. 

Unease passes over Bruce’s face as Jerome approaches with the hood—there and gone again in the span of a few seconds, but it had been there. Jerome had seen it, and Jerome was going to press against his weak spots and make his mask of composure crack right open and fall to unrecognizable pieces—but he collects himself, lips pressing into a stern line. His eyes are glossy—possibly due to his interrupted goodbye—as two of Jerome’s Maniax grab hold of his arms to pin him in place.

His hands are curled into fists, his knuckles bleached near-white from the pressure.

Jerome had wanted to cause fear more than anger, but he supposes there are more than enough people in this city who would scream in horror at the sight of him, now. 

“Where we’re going is a surprise,” he sing-songs, draping the rough fabric over the crown of Bruce’s head and letting it settle upon him like a particularly ugly hat. “Are you as excited as I am?”

Bruce’s lips purse tighter together, like he doesn’t want to give Jerome the satisfaction of a reply. Or maybe he’s starting to feel the fear creeping into his veins—an icy wash that is turning his insides cold—now that he really is all alone, out of his depth, and about to be taken to a strange, awful, wonderful place. Maybe once it’s time to start the climax of the night he’ll be trembling.

At the moment, though, his eyes are still lit up with something—maybe hatred, maybe rage, maybe if Jerome’s Maniax weren’t holding him tight he’d be storming back into his home to try and save his poor, precious butler—and it’s almost a shame to pull the hood completely over his head, but; needs must. 

“Don’t damage the goods,” Jerome tells his followers when Bruce’s face is concealed from view. “He’s mine to hurt.”

 _His_ to toy with, _his_ to kill, _his_ whether Bruce wanted to be or not.

They jerk, both of them scrambling to keep Bruce’s fists trapped as he abruptly tries to break away. Jerome smartly steps to the side before Bruce starts wildly kicking the place that he had been standing. Jerome laughs as Bruce is dragged into the van, laughs as Bruce’s covered head whips in his direction, laughs as he opens the door to the passenger’s side and puts his feet up on the dash.

This was going to be so much fun.

The drive to the carnival is wild, and not just because Jerome highly suspects that the girl behind the wheel has only the vaguest idea of how to safely operate a vehicle. Jerome can sometimes smell smoke in the air, can sometimes catch glimpses of flame, can sometimes hear distant and not-so-distant screams, and it makes him break out in goosebumps all over again.

The people who made up his core of followers—his precious cult of Maniax; lunatic and idiots, what more could a man possibly ask for?—will be, for the most part, at the carnival eagerly awaiting his arrival. The vast majority of the people who are setting the city ablaze? They’re just ordinary civilians taking advantage of the opportunity that Jerome had handed to them on a silver platter. 

Gotham has so much madness and wickedness locked away inside of it and Jerome has given it all an opportunity to come out and play. People are showing their true colours; they’re eagerly destroying and pillaging and murdering, or they’re cowardly hiding away and praying for daylight or the GCPD to save them. Jerome’s special night can’t extend on for an eternity, but isn’t it thrilling to watch the immorality take over?

He glances back.

Bruce is sitting still; upright and statuesque when most would likely be cowering and attempting to curl into themselves in order to seem smaller, less noticeable. Jerome thinks about what his expression might be underneath the hood. Considers what he’ll look like when he can see what has been lying dormant in the terrible underbelly of the city that he calls home. Wonders what he’ll look like when Jerome finally leads him into the last trap that he’ll ever get caught in. Fantasizes about what he’ll look like when the light begins to fade away from his burning eyes.

His fingers tap along the armrests, more out of an inability to stay still than actual impatience. He’s so keyed up. He wants to know, he wants to see, he wants to know, he wants to see. 

He could practically crow in excitement when they arrive at the place his Maniax had spoken to him of on the ride over to Wayne Manor. There are lights, and there is music, and there is laughter, and there is screaming. Excitement and terror and pain all expressed so openly. 

Bruce could learn a thing or two from it, really. His cold, stone-carved face could really do with a splash of emotion. A splash of colour, even.

An idea starts to form in Jerome’s mind as he steps out of the van, and he chuckles under his breath. 

He steps into the madness and is captivated immediately. Multiple eyes turn and lock on his face, recognition and awe apparent in those who have begun to gaze upon him. Jerome waves—a recognition but not an invitation—and those eyes settle on what can only be the still concealed form of Bruce Wayne being forced to follow in his footsteps. They cannot know who it is that Jerome has brought as a special guest but smiles curl on their mouths all the same before they throw themselves even more fervently into their fun. 

He gestures for one of his Maniax to push Bruce out in front of them, and he watches zealously as she does so before, on another of his signals, she grips the back of the hood and rips it off.

Bruce puts a hand up to his face, the lights of the carnival stinging after he’d become accustomed to the dark, and he starts glancing around. Eventually he begins to realize that so many things _aren’t right._ His eyes dart all over the place, taking in the sights that Jerome himself has been so eager to see, so eager to indulge in. Blood and violence and gore. 

The wickedest kinds of fun. 

“Well, we’re off to a good start,” Jerome says, pleased. “What do you say, Bruce, wanna have some fun before the main event?” He annunciates it pointedly, wanting to make sure that Bruce is certain that _he_ is the night’s main event. Only the best for the Prince of Gotham’s execution, after all. 

Bruce doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t have to because he no longer has a say in what he can and cannot do. His life and his death are all tied up at the mercy of Jerome’s impulses. The lynchpin of a giant absurd machine will be pulled out of place as soon as Jerome believes the time is right. 

And that knowledge makes him feel even more powerful. 

Jerome gestures again, and the one who had pulled the hood from Bruce’s head pushes him forward.

It was time to get some colour and expression on Bruce’s stony face.

Jerome scrutinizes Bruce’s reflection as he gets his face painted; his downcast eyes mostly settle on his hands, which are folded together in his lap. Sometimes he glances up at the face-painter, sharing a look with him that makes Jerome’s skin prick with irritation for some reason. Even rarer is when he looks into the mirror. Jerome can see that his eyes are not focusing on his own reflection, during those fleeting occasions, but instead flittering around what lays behind him.

Whenever he catches sight of Jerome watching him in the mirror his eyes dart back down again. It almost reads as being shy—as if Bruce is a demure slip of a boy distressed by such close attention—but Jerome knows better after interacting with him in Wayne Manor. 

Soon the finishing touches are being carefully brushed into place.

It’s not exactly what Jerome had in mind, but it suits him. Sad little orphan boy; poster-child for loss and misery. 

“I’m planning something spectacular,” he says to one of the Maniax who’ve eagerly settled close to him. “Spread the word around.”

Jerome folds his hands behind his back and slowly stalks towards Bruce while the face-painter uneasily backs away. Bruce’s eyes track his progress in the mirror, and Jerome thinks about what he would look like if real tears began to fall from his eyes, smudging the black that they’d been lined with.

A pretty little tragedy.

“Gotta be honest, Bruce,” he says as he comes to a stop just behind Bruce’s shoulder. “You don’t make the world’s funniest clown,” he rumbles, then allows a little pause for added emphasis. Never let it be said that he couldn’t perform on a one-to-one basis and not just for a crowd. “But,” his tone brightens as he pulls out his knife. The blade clicks as it settles into position. The face painter makes a muted, worried sound. Bruce eyes the knife warily. Jerome’s free hand digs into Bruce’s soft curls, and then he wrenches his head back. “We can fix that.” 

The knife edges closer and Bruce moves away, hands anxiously gripping the arms of the chair while he inadvertently pushes himself against Jerome’s chest to try and escape from the weapon that Jerome has held up to his neck. Jerome closely observes his expression in the mirror, his chin brushing against Bruce’s shoulder. This is the most scared that he’s looked all night. Finally, a _reaction_. Jerome wants to commit it to memory. 

He twists the knife in his hand. Instead of slitting Bruce’s delicate throat he stabs it into the abdomen of the face-painter, then he roughly digs a finger into broken skin and torn muscle as the man cries.

“Ah, shuddup ya big baby.” He’s vaguely aware that Bruce has turned his gaze away, but it’s not long before Jerome’s arm is wrapping around his shoulders, forcing him to face the mirror, forcing him to watch what Jerome is doing.

His warm, bloody finger comes to rest in front of Bruce’s face. 

“Let’s turn that frown upside down,” he coos as his finger swipes a slick path across his mouth. He watches Bruce’s expression flicker, distress and disgust finally clear on his face for more than a handful of seconds, and Jerome smiles at the sight of their reflection.

They couldn’t be more different; representations of comedy and tragedy. Jerome will live. Bruce will die. The scales will balance out. Destiny will click into place. 

He wipes his bloody hand on the front of Bruce’s sweater and the red disappears into the black weave. In his other hand—the arm of which is still wrapped around Bruce’s shoulder in an almost-friendly manner—his knife rests, still open.

“Slitting your throat wouldn’t be dramatic enough,” he whispers into Bruce’s ear. “It’s not going to be a simple blade that ends you, now. If I had a guillotine, maybe.” He chortles. “But we couldn’t scrounge one of those up at the last minute. It would have been fitting, though.”

Revolutionary, _ha._

Bruce inhales deeply through his nose. His lips are pursed tightly together. Poor thing is so scared of getting blood in his mouth. He looks young, vulnerable. It reminds Jerome of the time they’d shared together at the benefit. It makes Jerome want to harass him even more than he already has.

“Come on,” he urges. He keeps his arm wrapped around Bruce’s shoulders as he forces Bruce out of the chair. He doesn’t want to miss out on a second of Bruce’s expressions now that his composure is starting to break. “There’s still so much more to see.”

Everywhere they look there are civilians crying, and screaming, and being threatened and hurt. Some to the point that without immediate medical attention they’re unlikely to fully recover. Jerome tours the grounds with him, looking at the spectacles just as much as he looks at Bruce’s ashen face, the pair of Maniax who had come with him from Wayne Manor trailing behind them. 

It is as they’re skirting around the carousel that Bruce finally seems to find his voice, or maybe the blood had finally dried to a point where he wasn’t worried about it seeping into his mouth. Either way, Jerome is strangely glad.

He thinks he would have been disappointed if Bruce had stayed silent for the rest of the night.

“Is there a plan for all this madness?”

His voice is level again, like it had been in his home, but Jerome knows that it’s a front. Bruce can be very, very good at concealing his emotions. It almost makes him mull over how much terror he must have lived through, to become so adept at such a thing at his age. Maybe he would ask, if he had more time. Alas…

“These people don’t want a plan, they want an excuse,” he explains, leading Bruce ever forward to his inevitable end. “A mother who dreams of strangling her child. A husband who wants to stab his wife.” He slows to a stop, turning to face Bruce fully, arm dragging from his shoulder to settle on the small of his back. He and Bruce lock eyes. “All they want is someone to tell them: do it.” Bruce eyes unsteadily flit over his face, from his eyes down to his mouth, then back up again. “Kill them, it doesn’t matter.” The air between them feels charged, like during the seconds before a storm erupts. “It doesn’t.”

He’s not entirely sure why he wants Bruce to understand as much as he does. Maybe because he can’t stand the idea that Bruce is trying to fit everything that’s happening into logical little boxes when the reality of it is that nothing _can_ fit into specific designations. It is chaos for chaos’s sake. It is whims and repressed urges allowed to take center stage. It is the rotting roots of society being exposed, being celebrated, being unleashed. 

Something catches his gaze behind Bruce—a dunk tank filled with carnivorous fish, how dreadfully delightful—and he breaks eye contact to stride towards it and grab a baseball. He tosses it between his hands, smiling at Bruce’s wan face as he settles at the line.

“You won’t get away with it,” Bruce speaks up again. It’s enough to break Jerome’s focus.

“Already did.” He turns, just slightly, just enough to make sure that Bruce isn’t trying to run off while Jerome’s back is to him. “Now. Shush, need to concentrate.”

“A few dozen brainwashed Maniax can’t keep the city hostage forever.”

“Well, duh.”

He winds up, eager and ready to hit the target and watch the whimpering businessman sitting on top of the tank get ripped to pieces in the water below.

“So what’s the point?” Bruce’s voice breaks his focus again, and this time Jerome turns his full attention onto him.

“The point,” he starts sharply, “is that all these people out here; looting, robbing, _killing._ They’re the people who wash your car, who pour your coffee, who take out your trash.” He folds his arms behind his back, looking into Bruce’s eyes again. He has nice eyes, Jerome thinks distantly. “And what happened the moment the lights went out? They showed their true faces.” His smile widens. “They showed how quickly they want to open up your rich-boy veins and bathe in your blue blood.” Bruce’s face is a mask again, and he absolutely hates it. “That,” he snaps. “Is the point.”

“That’s not true.” Bruce steps forward when he should really be stepping away. His gaze stays locked on Jerome when he should really be averting his eyes. So stubborn. So reckless in the face of certain danger. If Jerome didn’t want so badly to kill him, he thinks that maybe he’d like Bruce’s peculiar level of _audacity_. Or maybe he likes it even though he wants to kill him. He’s so keyed up, it’s difficult to tell. “There are good people in Gotham.”

He says it with such a serious face that Jerome can’t help but rasp out a laugh.

“Like who? The sheep who lock their doors and crawl under their beds?” Weren’t the people who did absolutely nothing to help just as guilty as the ones wreaking havoc? He looms in close. “Face it, kid, Gotham has no heroes.”

Bruce’s eyes flit downward again and, satisfied that he has nothing more to say, Jerome turns towards his chosen diversion. 

He winds up—

Hands roughly push at his back and he falls forward, catching himself after a few stumbling steps, but the ball pitches out of his hand wildly and misses the mark.

Impudent, fearless little _brat._ Jerome can’t believe that he’s still so brazen, here, where he is surrounded by people who’d love to see him dead.

Jerome can’t believe how much _fun_ he’s having. 

“You wanna kill someone?” His dark eyes reflect the many coloured lights of the carnival, but they’re also burning from the inside again. Jerome doesn’t think they’ll be as beautiful when his emotions no longer radiate from within the depths of them. What a pity. “Let’s get on with it, c’mon!” Bruce looks like he’d stalk towards him if he wasn’t being held back.

Jerome yawns at the performance even though something inside of him has perked up, watching Bruce with a new set of eyes.

“You’re so boring, Bruce,” he lies with ease. If Bruce were boring, he wouldn’t be worth the effort of bringing here. If Bruce were boring, he wouldn’t have insinuated that he needed an audience to watch his death. If Bruce were boring, he would have cried and begged—just like all of the civilians stuck in this carnival—and Jerome would have slit his throat and been done with it. Jerome rests his hand against the button, and the trigger for the dunk tank engages. 

His eyes flick back and forth between Bruce—who is trying to rush forward as if he is capable of doing anything other than going along with Jerome’s flights of fancy, right now—and the whirl of activity in the tank. Blood begins to dye the water, and the fight slowly leaves Bruce’s body.

It’s so easy to wind him up.

Someone approaches him with a staple gun, and Jerome takes off his hat. His seeking fingers find the spot where the edges of his skin are coming loose and he affixes it back into place, unable to hold back a grating sound of discomfort. 

“Did that hurt?” Bruce asks harshly. 

Attitude. Impudence.

“Not much.” A new whim flickers in his thoughts, and Jerome is quick to embrace it. He closes the distance between them and takes Bruce’s smooth, unmarked arm into his hand. His skin is soft. Pliant. Jerome bets he bruises like a peach. “You try.”

He punches a staple in, and Bruce—

He blinks at the initial breaking of skin but then he stares, unflinching, into Jerome’s eyes.

Grace under pressure, his mind echoes again. 

Ha. A challenge. Jerome isn’t entirely surprised, considering how Bruce has handled himself during this entire mad affair so far, still…

Jerome’s heart, for some reason, begins to race.

He moves a little closer, drags the staple gun a few centimeters up Bruce’s arm, and presses down a second time.

Bruce blinks again, but otherwise his face shows nothing. He tilts his chin up, as if daring Jerome to continue. Jerome can feel his grip on Bruce’s arm turn bruising, and his entire body thrums. The air between them is charged, again, and Jerome isn’t entirely sure what it’s charged _with_.

The third staple does the trick, snapping Bruce’s composure like a tightly drawn elastic. The building charge between them disperses and Jerome laughs at his cries to stop, but his mind whirrs at those few seconds of bizarre expectation.

He almost thought that Bruce wouldn’t break. He almost wanted Bruce _not_ to break.

“Alright, enough dilly-dally.” He places his hat back atop his head and opens his arms in a showman’s gesture. “To the main event.”

He thinks that, somehow, killing Bruce is going to be even more significant than he thought it would be. He thinks that no matter who he kills after this—no matter how rich or important or influential they are—Bruce will be the death that he remembers with the most clarity, the most fondness. And it is not just because he is the lynchpin to a giant absurd machine that Jerome has tried and failed to kill before. And it has nothing to do with his surname. 

It’s because he’s stubborn and stone-faced and graceful under pressure, with eyes that burn when his temper is stoked.

It’s because he’s _Bruce_.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3

Jerome is alone for the first time since the immediate aftermath of his explosion at the power plant as he gets himself ready for a show like no other. The evening’s climax. The long-awaited conclusion to his unfinished business. The thing that he’d had heady daydreams about back when Theo first explained the false plan for the benefit to him, and back when he woke up after a year of dull darkness and learned that Bruce was still alive.

He’d given instructions to the Maniax who’d been faithfully attending him ever since they’d found him, and they had dragged Bruce away for his own particular preparation. Jerome had watched him go, his heels digging into the dirt as if he didn’t want to be parted from Jerome’s side.

That electric charge had built up again, before Bruce disappeared behind the fabric of a tent.

There was something about him—something about their shared story, their shared endings, their shared inside joke that Jerome still didn’t think was fully refined yet—that made Jerome’s fingers twitch with a curious desire.

His hair was soft, his skin was soft, his lips were soft.

Underneath all of that pampered softness he was surprisingly unyielding. A tough core wrapped up in a multitude of fine, silky layers; the sort of precious thing that Jerome would never be _allowed_ to touch under ordinary circumstances. Soon he would crumble under the relentless pressure of Jerome’s deadly attention, though. Soon he wouldn’t be able to pull himself back together after his fleeting displays of weakness and terror. Soon Jerome would finally do what he’s been thinking about ever since he drifted back to the land of the living. 

Soon Bruce Wayne is going to take his last breath.

A lynchpin pulled out of place; a giant absurd machine wrenching to a halt because of it. And could anything really go back to the way it was before when there was no one in Gotham who could possibly take Bruce’s place? Jerome’s special night may come to an end, but Gotham wouldn’t ever be the same.

He pulls on the boots. He smooths out the jacket. He checks himself over in the mirror.

He’s ready.

Jerome’s heart starts racing again. 

The crowd had started gathering around the ring nearly as soon as Jerome had slipped away for his costume change and even from his secluded location he could tell that they were so rowdy, so eager for the show to begin. But no one was as eager as Jerome was to see his precious co-star pinned in place like some sort of rare, beautiful butterfly laid out for the sole purpose of being displayed. 

“We all know why we’re here,” a voice from outside begins. “Here comes _Jerome_ , everybody!”

He strolls out as he’s announced, and the crowd assembled before him cheers wildly at his entrance.

He takes a bow.

“Hear ye, hear ye, gather round,” he commands into his megaphone. He strides around the ring like this is where he belongs. The spotlight follows him. Every eye follows him. Destiny is clicking into place. “The _show_ is about to _begin!_ ”

The cheers start up again, and he holds a hand up to his ear to encourage even more uproar. Once he’s satisfied he raises his hands and then sweeps them open in a gesture to quiet down.

The crowd obediently does as they are bid. 

One person standing upon the raised edge of the ring, though, continues on without a care. Without seeming to understand the stark _context cue_ that was everyone else’s silence. The one who’d announced his arrival. A grating, annoying voice stealing Jerome’s thunder by undermining his commands. 

He can’t allow _that_ , can he?

Of course not.

He pulls out his gun and shoots. The man drops. He can hear a flurry of shocked gasps from the audience. They should already know that just because they were a true believer didn’t mean that they were safe if they sparked his temper. If they’d watched his broadcast from the power plant then they would have seen exactly how he’d left the man who had loyally brought him back to life, but who had also stolen his face and claimed to be _him_ on television. 

He brings the megaphone up to his mouth.

“Shut up!”

The crowd laughs.

“Better.” He says, and he chuckles. “Well, I think we can all agree tonight was a _rousing_ success.” People are being reborn in the most wretched ways imaginable. He’s seen so many wonderful, awful things. He’s held a knife to Bruce Wayne’s throat. He’s shown him exactly what people are capable of when they no longer fear repercussions. “We brought this _miserable_ city to its _knees_.”

The crowd claps and cheers even louder than before. Jerome leaps up onto a podium, elevating himself further. No one can tear their eyes off of him. He has power and influence. He is in control of so many things; life and death and everything in between.

“So.” He is speaking, and they are listening, and he knows that this is how it is meant to be from now on. “How to thank the best darn cult fanatics a Messiah like myself could ever hope for?” He asks the crowd fervently. “I give you…” He turns sharply, and—

Bruce not only isn’t there, the curtains don’t even part for him to be brought out.

Jerome’s fingers flex with the sudden desire to strangle someone. 

“Cue!” He prompts into the megaphone. The Maniax in front of the curtains startle, making supplicating gestures before they finally do their damn job. He watches from the corner of his eye as the curtains spread open. 

“I give you the climax of our festivities,” he begins for a second time. “The billionaire Prince of Gotham,” he announces. My favourite volunteer, he thinks. Bruce is rolled out from behind the curtain and placed in the center of the ring. “Bruuuuce,” he drawls in his own delighted impression of a sports announcer. “Waaaayne!”

Here he is, Jerome’s co-star of the evening. His wrists are cuffed above his head. He’s helpless, hopeless. There’s no way he’ll be able to break free and slip away. 

The boy who died coming back as a Messiah.

The boy who escaped death rendered unable to flee. 

It’s almost time.

Jerome tucks his gun back into his vest and leaps down from his own podium. He speaks into the megaphone, which is a scant few inches away from Bruce’s face, amused by the spectacle that they make.

“Well. So what do you say, Bruce?” He asks softly, looking directly at him. “Shall we end the night with a bang?” He turns towards the audience again. “Or better yet.” He leans into an inquiring pose. “A _boom?_ ”

The cannon is dragged into view of the crowd. Jerome briefly leaps up to the platform that Bruce is stuck on, unable to stop himself from taking a few seconds to ruffle his hair in an overly-familiar manner before stepping towards the crowd again, reveling in their enthusiasm to witness the thing that has been on Jerome’s mind all night. 

It’s clear from the audiences’ shouting just what their vote is for.

Jerome darts a glance back, a wicked smile gracing his features. Bruce’s eyes aren’t on him, though, instead focusing on the crowd who are going mad with their desire to watch him die. Irritation fills him up, just like it had when Bruce’s attention had drifted onto that stupid owl back in his home what feels like more than just a few hours ago.

He is the reason why Bruce is in this predicament. He is the reason why Bruce is trapped. He is the reason why Bruce is going to die.

Bruce is his to play with, his to showcase, his to destroy. It is not the chanting crowd who have spelled his end, because his end had already been fixed in Jerome’s mind. 

Jerome looks back to his audience, holding a hand over his heart as he steps backwards. “Never let it be said that I don’t _love_ giving those who follow me _exactly_ what they want.” He feels the edge of Bruce’s podium brush against his calves, and he leaps back up to it as the crowd goes wild.

He turns, megaphone dropping to his side, and is pleased to find Bruce looking up at him. His eyes are wide, startled, glassy with a thin layer of unshed tears. He looks young and vulnerable again. Jerome’s chest is filled with a strange sort of longing at the sight of him, but he chooses to ignore it and focus on his annoyance instead.

“You should be watching me, not them.”

Bruce’s lips part. Jerome sees a flash of his tongue moving behind his pearly teeth and is quite suddenly struck with a hot, fluttering ache. Bruce’s mouth snaps shut after a second, as if he’d been meaning to lick his lips before he remembered exactly what Jerome had drawn over his mouth. 

“And if I don’t?” He sounds worn out. Jerome has put him through so much tonight but he’d survived where so many others would have fallen, too boring or too unimportant to bother with for this long. Anyone else, surely, would have tripped up at the first obstacle and subsequently been slaughtered in their home. He’s done so well; better than Jerome could have even dreamed. Knowingly and unknowingly escalating the situation all night, raising the stakes every time he opened his mouth. Jerome wishes he could reward him for it. “You’re already planning on murdering me.” He attempts to keep his tone flat, though the word ‘murdering’ does crackle and stutter out of his mouth in a way that proves his composure is failing him. Jerome can hardly believe that he’s not letting the tears fall, now that they’re so very close to the end. He’d half-expected Bruce’s black-lined eyes to be smudged when he’d been dragged out. He’d half-expected active sobbing. So unpredictable, even now. “There’s not much else you can threaten me with at this point.”

Jerome huffs out a laugh, charmed again despite himself. He reaches his free hand up, settling it against Bruce’s cheek. He leans in, intimately close, just like he had after Bruce’s attempted manipulation. Something like satisfaction rumbles through him at the way Bruce goes very still, as if he’s holding his breath. Or as if Jerome being so close made his breath catch in his throat.

He's not sure which one he would rather be the cause.

“I am the one controlling your death, Bruce,” he whispers, lips grazing against the shell of Bruce’s ear. The sensation makes the mutilated skin of his mouth _tingle_ for some reason. “Not the crowd, not anyone else,” he finishes bluntly. “That means I’m also the one controlling _how quickly_ you die.” He leans back, gloved thumb trailing along the dried blood smeared across Bruce’s lips. Bruce glares at him. His eyes are becoming glossier—mirrorlike, reflecting the lights of the stage in a way that’s both lovely and haunting—but he’s also looking at Jerome as if he’s barely holding back the urge to snap his teeth at him.

Oh, Jerome wishes he _would._ There is a darkness seeded inside of every Gotham citizen—true products of their environment—and that means that inside Bruce there must be something waiting to burst free, if only he would let it. 

If only he had the time to let it. 

But their time together is almost up. Their story is reaching its inevitable end. Their shared inside joke is about to get its punchline in the form of a death-by-cannon.

Jerome’s hand trails down, fists itself into the collar of his turtleneck, and tugs.

There’s something he wants to check for before Bruce’s body is rendered unrecognizable.

There’s something he wants to see. 

There, on his pretty pink throat, is a faded white line. The line that Jerome would have traced with his knife. The line that connected them even while Jerome had been dead. The line that must have served as a constant reminder of how close Jerome had come to killing Bruce before.

He wonders if Bruce thought of him often.

He wonders if Bruce watched his video from the police station more than once. 

He wonders what might have happened if Bruce wasn’t such an important part of whatever Theo’s scheme had been that the idea of killing him had never crossed Jerome’s mind in the first place. 

“I was going to hold you in my arms as you bled out,” Jerome says to the boy waiting at death’s door. Bruce’s eyes widen, his mouth parts, his breath hitches—

Jerome leaps backwards, mind buzzing.

He hadn’t needed to say that, but something in him wanted to. Wanted Bruce to know how this all would have ended if it had been a more personal affair. A handful of Jerome’s loyal followers, Bruce’s butler, and _them_ at center-stage lit only by firelight. 

His fingers twitch, and he remembers his desire to feel Bruce’s pulse.

But he can’t exactly do that without putting himself in the literal line of fire, now. Unfortunately, in giving the crowd what they wanted the most, actors and directors occasionally suffered through personal disappointments.

He brings the megaphone up to his mouth again, truly disgusting promises dripping from his mangled lips. His Maniax eat it up, starved for the pandemonium that he is so skillful at constructing. They were capable of so much under his guidance, but what were they without him acting as a spearhead?

What were lunatics and idiots without someone fit to lead them?

Not a force that could bring down Gotham. Not a force that could turn the world inside out.

Not a force that could make Bruce’s eyes spark and illuminate as his temper flared up. Not a force that could make Bruce retreat in fear, his back pressing against Jerome’s chest, his hair brushing against Jerome’s cheek, his eyes anxiously watching the progress of the knife in Jerome’s hand. Not a force that could make Bruce’s composure snap like an elastic that had been stretched too far. 

He makes a pleased rumble in the back of his throat at the memories, and when he glances back Bruce is staring at him.

Good, he thinks.

He winks at him, cheeky, before he gets down to business. 

A cannon ball, a bucket of knives, what probably worked out to be a thousand or so nails—these are the things that Jerome fills the cannon with, these are the things that he gleefully showcases to Bruce before he shoves them inside.

He’s so close. His heart is racing even faster, now, an almost nervous anticipation springing up in the depths of him. 

“Alright, folks, this is very important,” he addresses the crowd again once the cannon is filled with a truly incredible amount of both sharp and blunt objects. “Whatever you do, please, definitely try this at home. Preferably on a family member.” They laugh, they cheer, they whistle. It’s enough to make him feel like more than just _a teenager_. More than just _a man_ , even. He came back to life after a very public death. He is a Messiah, and perhaps there is even more to it then that. Once the task that he needs to complete is over he can fully discover the kinds of trouble that he can stir up, the kinds of madness that he can encourage, the kinds of hell that he can raise. 

He’s so excited for the climax. He’s so pleased that he hadn’t swiftly killed Bruce in his home. It had been so amusing to toy with him and show him around the wretched, wonderful place that his followers had created for themselves. 

He wishes that it could have lasted a little bit longer. 

And then, suddenly—

Gunshots.

His eyes turn towards the sound. “Detective Gordon!” He calls at the sight of a familiar, frowning face. “You’re just in time for the big finish!”

Needless to say, the place gets even more crazy. 

Jerome manages to light the wick, though, and as he does he can see Bruce looking his way.

He smiles and waves before retreating but something—maybe that same thing that had wanted Bruce to know how Jerome would have killed him if the idea to have it turned into a spectacle hadn’t been brought up—ardently wonders if someone will make it to the podium in time to save him.

If they did—

A bullet embeds itself in the ground at his feet, and Jerome slips further away.

If they did, Jerome would have a chance to do this all over again.

He feels oddly besotted by the thought of it.

He loses track of time, of the cannon, of Bruce. At least until he hears the resonating sound of too many projectiles being flung forward by an explosion of gunpowder. He turns, he looks—

Bruce’s body isn’t on the podium. 

Excitement floods through him. His heart races for reasons that have nothing to do with the cops showing up. Heat churns inside of his belly. His eyes dart around the chaos; searching, searching, searching for the person who matters above all others. 

He has to find him, has to find him, has to find him—

He was Jerome’s to hurt, Jerome’s to tease, Jerome’s to kill.

No one else should dare even _try_ to be his end.

His, his, his—

“Oh _Bruce_ ,” Jerome calls loudly. “Where are ya, boy?” He turns around, full circle, intent on catching any trace of him. He can’t have gone far. “Come on out, boy. I won’t hurt ya.”

And finally he catches sight of him, slipping into the doorway of the maze of mirrors. An enclosed space. Private. Intimate. 

_Perfect._

Anticipation courses through him, making his heart flutter as he cocks his gun.

“Bruce, darlin’,” he utters softly.

He’s so glad that this will end personally after all. He’d already given his audience a show.

The rest was just for _him_.

He dashes towards the maze of mirrors, easily ignoring the chaos that would otherwise have his full attention.

He had something—someone—far more important to focus on.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gosh, I had fun with this. Writing these two was, as always, such a pleasure.
> 
> xoxo

A year ago, up on a stage, Jerome thought that Bruce would be an easy kill.

Hours ago, in a dimly lit office, Jerome thought that Bruce would be an easy kill.

He’s never been quite so happy to be proven so very wrong. 

“Oh _Brucie._ ”

He steps further inside and a dozen reflections step with him, each one offset just slightly by a miniscule change in its angle. He holds his gun out, eyes eagerly taking in the path of the maze.

“You ruined my show, Bruce.” He’d ruined it for the audience, in any case, who would no doubt be disappointed by the last-minute escape if they weren’t so preoccupied with fighting and running. Jerome, though, was secretly delighted by the heightened drama of it. Just how much effort would it take to actually kill Bruce Wayne once and for all? “Hiding’s just going to make things worse.”

Footsteps.

A dark form moving, splitting, becoming a dozen matching figures.

“I didn’t come here to hide.” Bruce’s voice resonates, bouncing off the surfaces of the mirrors just like light. Jerome turns, shoots into a mirror. The reflections of Bruce turn their back on him as he moves. “I wanted you to follow me.”

Jerome feels himself breaking out into goosebumps again, and a delightful electric current runs down his spine. This is even better than Bruce running in here trying to escape. Clever, cunning, charming boy, raising the stakes even more. He is not on the path straight ahead, and his reflections bounce off of each other making it difficult to figure out exactly where he is.

But he _is_ nearby.

“You’re going to pay for what you’ve done.”

Jerome loses himself for a moment, looking at the reflection of a distant reflection. The white and black around his eyes is smudged, the blood around his mouth is dried and flaking away. He watches Bruce through a mirror and, unlike when he had been observing as Bruce had his face painted, Bruce is looking right back at him. Nothing about him reads as shy, now.

The image of him disappears from the glass, and Jerome is lured deeper into the maze. He turns corners quickly, eyes darting over each polished surface that surrounds him. He cannot see Bruce, but he must be watching from somewhere. 

Bruce is the one toying with him, now.

He cannot help but laugh. “I have to tell ya, this is _way_ more fun than I was expecting.”

Killing Bruce up on the stage at the benefit would have been significant. Killing Bruce in his home would have been significant. But it would not have been _fun_. It would have been fleeting and beautiful, yes; a shooting star sputtering out in the night sky. It would not have been anything like this; an enticing game that Jerome could feel himself getting pulled deeper into. 

If Bruce had been anyone else then surely he would have been dead long before now. There had been so many opportunities for it; in his home, in the van, in front of the face-painter’s mirror, beside the dunk tank, _on the stage_. 

It was as if life clung onto him the way death clung onto others.

A boy marked for death, yet survived so much—

—there must have been more that Jerome was missing. Theo’s plot had involved Bruce somehow. Theo had come back from the dead, too. There must have been reasons why Bruce was able to appear calm when Jerome approached him after a year apart to put an end to his unfinished business. There must have been a reason why Bruce’s mind hadn’t frozen up in fear and he’d been able to all but demand an audience in order to give himself time—

—could such a boy be killed?

One way to find out.

His path angles, taking him closer to the wall.

“We make a good team, you and me,” he muses, raising a hand to his hair. His mind sparks with memories of unfinished jokes—the boy who got away, the boy who escaped death, the boy, the boy, the boy—

What would have happened if Bruce wasn’t part of Theo’s false scheme at the benefit? What would have happened if the idea of killing him had never crossed Jerome’s mind in the first place?

“You killed Alfred.”

The voice resonates again, but it cannot be coming from in front of him so Jerome turns and shoots the first dark figure that he sees. More glass shatters, and replicas upon replicas of Bruce twist, scrambling out of sight once again. 

“Is that what this is about?” Honestly, had Jerome not given him hundreds of other awful reasons to finally act up? “ _Yeesh._ ” He thinks of the way Bruce had come out of hiding in order to save him. He thinks of Bruce’s glassy eyes when he’d been dragged away from him. “Are all rich kids this _close_ with their butlers?”

Footsteps rush by. They don’t echo off the walls quite the same way that Bruce’s voice does. Jerome turns and shoots again. Reflections of Bruce dart of in seemingly every direction, and Jerome laughs again.

“This is about doing what’s right,” Bruce answers firmly from wherever he’s hidden himself away.

Bruce is not someone who would have locked his door. Bruce is not someone who would have hidden under his bed. Bruce was not like the spineless sheep who filled up the city and who were praying for it all to be over. 

Bruce was—

—something else. Something better. Something unexpected. Something that Jerome couldn’t quite put his finger on. 

“You wanna be a hero?” Just like he had tried to be when he pushed Jerome forward and attempted to rile him up in order to steal his attention away from the dunk tank. “Tell ya what, buddy.” He tosses his gun into his other hand, shaking it pointedly by the handle before ducking down and letting it slide across the floor. “I’ll give you a fighting chance.”

He lifts himself back up, heart pounding in his ears.

“Let’s do this mano a mano,” he says, flexing the fingers of one hand in a ‘come hither’ gesture while his other hand flicks open his knife. Perhaps, after all of this, Jerome was going to get the end that he had originally planned for. A knife was so much more personal than a gun. “My little conquistador,” he finishes lowly. _His_ , he thinks again. “Come on.”

He barely recognizes the flicker of movement—reflections upon endless reflections with no idea where the original source was coming from; Bruce had done so well coming in here—before he’s bowled over, his knife dropping from his fingers and skittering across the floor just like the gun.

“What kind of hero tackles someone from behind?” He grits out, crawling away as Bruce’s hands scrabble against his back. He turns onto his side and lashes out with his foot, his heel coming into firm, gratifying contact with Bruce’s forehead. He bets it will turn into a killer bruise, and the thought makes him snicker. 

They both lift up to their feet, Jerome slipping into a showy sort of brawler’s stance in response to the way Bruce lifts his hands. He may not have his gun or his knife, but that doesn’t mean he’s defenseless _or_ no longer a threat. 

He manages to get Bruce in the forehead again. The contact isn’t as hard as his kick but Jerome is sure it must ache terribly. He winds up— more for show than for added strength, not wanting this to end too soon when the buildup had been so spectacular—planning a hit to his jaw next, and—

Bruce darts out of the way and punches him, hard, in the ribs.

Then even harder in the face.

 _Holy shit_.

Jerome’s hand comes up to his skin as he stumbles, turns, wildly punches. Bruce’s weight shifts to the side, Jerome’s fist barely grazing his shoulder. Jerome swings with his other arm, but Bruce ducks under it, and when he rises up the back of his entire arm smacks against Jerome’s head. 

Jerome can actually feel a few staples go loose.

_Bruce Wayne knew how to fight._

It’s startling and exciting and _invigorating_. This is the most alive that Jerome has felt since he woke up.

Jerome swings, no longer bothering with any overelaborate gestures, but it’s too wide, and Bruce kicks him. Jerome’s knees buckle and Bruce is quick to take advantage of the opening by punching him again. 

He falls onto his back but laughter bubbles up from his throat even now, even as Bruce’s knees brace on either side of him, even as Bruce hovers above him, even as Bruce’s fist smashes against his face.

A darkness was seeded inside of every Gotham citizen, and it turns out Bruce had time to unleash his after all.

His skin is ripping around the anchoring staples. Blood is oozing down his neck, is splattering the floor beneath him, is dripping precariously close to his eyes. Bruce is bruising his knuckles on Jerome’s face, and never in any of Jerome’s wild, heady fantasies did he ever fight back _like this_.

“Let it out,” he urges between laughter, between punches. Bruce is vicious. Bruce is unforgiving. Bruce is incredible. “That’s it.”

Bruce grabs onto the lapels of his jacket.

“That’s it,” Jerome says again, voice gurgling. Blood is seeping from the edges of his face and into his mouth, trickling down his throat. “Let it out.”

He feels proud, in a way.

 _He_ is the reason for this. _He_ is the reason why Bruce’s stony composure has crumbled into dust. _He_ is the root cause of every. Little. Thing. That has made Bruce scared or angry or violent tonight. 

The sacrificial lamb had been a wolf in sheep’s clothing all along, but it was only because of Jerome that he’d shed his false skin to show what he truly was underneath. 

Bruce scrambles for something and Jerome’s eyes soon catch sight of a glinting edge in his hand; a large, broken shard of one of the many mirrors that have been cracked.

They lock eyes again and Jerome can tell—can see the stalwart resolution, can see the fury and retribution burning in the depths of him, can see everything that Bruce has been holding back tonight ever since Jerome broke into his home rushing to the surface as if the dam keeping it locked away has burst—that _Bruce is going to kill him._

Death is dull. Death is nothing but darkness. Death is not something that Jerome wants to go back to.

But—

But if Bruce kills him, he’ll never be the same as he was before. He’ll carry it with him always.

The scar that Jerome had left on his neck would be nothing compared to this.

He’d be _immortalized_ by it. 

He would not have begged for his life anyway—such a thing would have been beneath him, now—but he had not expected to feel a strange, accepting calmness. Perhaps he would not have, if it were anyone but Bruce planning his end. His racing thoughts are quieting and going still. Bruce will kill him, but in doing so Bruce is going to prove to himself that Jerome has been right about everything. In doing so Bruce is going change. 

He will become a previously unknown flash of something both brilliant and enduring that Jerome cannot wait to see. He’ll watch Bruce until he breathes his last breath. Until his heart stops. Until the light fades out of his eyes. 

Bruce raises the shard; Jerome’s wild heart skips a beat.

He’s stunning—

Bruce pauses; catching sight of and staring at his reflection. 

He gazes as if he’s never seen his own face before. As if the unchaining of whatever brutal thing that had hidden away inside of him has rendered him a stranger to himself. The fire in his eyes begins to die out, the flames smothered by self-recognition. He knew, just like Jerome knew, that if he did this there would be no coming back from it.

“Bruce,” his voice is soft, but it’s enough to snap Bruce’s attention back onto him.

The tension between them stretches out to the point where it’s almost unbearable. Bruce’s eyes are tearing up. His hand is shaking. He’s young and vulnerable and all Jerome wants to do is urge him on.

“Do it,” he says. He’s not sure if it’s an order or a request. His ensuing laughter is rough. Pain and _something else_ are flaring up inside of him. His limbs are heavy, his knees are weak, he’s so on edge that he can hardly breathe. 

Bruce leans towards him as if the weight of the world is pushing him down, pushing him closer.

Jerome’s eyelashes flutter at his nearness. 

He screams; full of sorrow and pain and anger, right in Jerome’s face.

The mirror shard clatters out of his hand, and once again Jerome cannot hold back his laughter.

Not dying means another chance to do this all over again.

His chest is tight, filled to the brim with something that he cannot put a name to—something that he has never felt before, even stronger than the moments where the air between himself and Bruce became charged with a new and unfamiliar intent. Maybe, he thinks fervently, maybe what he thought of as the start to a joke was not meant to be a joke at all.

The boy who cannot be killed and the boy who already died.

_Ha._

Maybe it is the start of something even better. Not a joke with a single witty punch-line, but an entire play. Tragedy and comedy, action and drama, choruses and costume changes and the sort of climax that would leave the crowd _screaming._

Maybe it is the start of their destinies clicking into place alongside each other. 

In the drawn-out moment where Bruce is motionless over top of him Jerome wonders if he feels it, too.

He _has to._

Bruce is silent. He is alive, but he looks defeated—shaken up by the weight of the act that he had been so close to committing. He braces his trembling hands on Jerome’s chest, pushing against him as he rises to his feet.

He goes.

He doesn’t look back.

And this—

—Jerome's fingers curl into fists. His blood is rushing, the hot ache that he had felt when he’d seen Bruce’s tongue flash between his teeth is back full-force—

—this can’t end like this. Jerome will not allow it. 

He rolls onto his side and takes the shard of mirror that Bruce had held. He could find his gun. He could find his knife. But this is more poetic. The mirror shard is steeped with meaning. The mirror shard represents a private story, a shared realization, a very special moment in suspended in time. 

The mirror shard is another little piece of the strange, terrible, beautiful puzzle that they make.

He drags himself to his feet. His face aches, he can feel that some of the edges are precariously loose. If Bruce had hit him a few more times he wouldn’t have been surprised if the whole thing slipped right off.

He wonders what Bruce’s face would have been like if that had happened, and he chortles as he stumbles along the path that Bruce had taken to the door.

It is dark and chaotic outside of the maze, but Jerome spots him immediately all the same and everything else falls away into nothingness. He surges forward, thoughts rushing in his head, a cacophony of noise that he can’t make heads or tails of, but his chest is tight, and his heart is racing, and he’s going to make Bruce _look back at him_ and _acknowledge_ that there was something, there, lodged in the space between them, a tether winding them closer together the longer that they stayed within each other’s orbits. 

He doesn’t get the chance to press the mirror shard against the scar on Bruce’s throat in a demand to make him _look_ , and _see_ , and _understand_. 

Someone else comes between him and his—victim, volunteer, lamb, wolf, reason for being—and as another punch to the face rips even more of his skin he can feel it begin to slide across newly exposed muscle. 

He turns, glaring at Detective Gordon as best as he can with his sight obscured. He can make out the wide, startled look in his eyes before he swings the arm with the shard out. Detective Gordon leaps back, winds up and punches him a second time.

The skin of his face is completely gone, the gory remains are left open to air.

_It hurts._

Before he falls he can make out that the three looking upon him—Bruce, Gordon, the goddamn butler—are horrified at the sight of him.

His back hits the pavement and he can’t seem to find the strength to pick himself up off of the ground. He lays there instead, eyes seeking _him_ out, and he finds Bruce gazing down upon him.

Their eyes lock again—for the dozenth, hundredth, innumerable time. 

Good, he thinks. 

A gurgling chuckle falls from his lips.

The boy who cannot be killed and the boy who already died.

What a fantastic pair they make.


End file.
